'But why?' Tears had again formed in Eve's eyes.
'I'm sorry, but I want you to leave now. Your problems aren't mine, and I don't want them to be. I can't help you.'
Eve was defeated. There was nothing more she could say to change Lili Peel's mind and she knew it. The expression on the other woman's face was resolute. Eve was beaten.
She slowly rose to her feet, gave one last look of appeal to the psychic, who refused to meet her gaze, and left the shop.
Eve couldn't quite understand how—or why—the meeting with Lili Peel had ended so abruptly.
29: HIDDEN
Gabe shifted the cardboard boxes, dumping them unceremoniously outside on the landing. Cally watched as he ducked back inside the cupboard, her first finger crooked over her short little nose, the thumb of the same hand lodged between her milk teeth. Daddy looked very serious.
The knocking he and Cally had heard coming from the landing cupboard again stopped even before Gabe touched the doorknob, but he was determined to find its cause this time.
The boxes were not heavy and through the open lid of one Gabe saw it contained cleaning utensils and liquids—a bottle of Jif and another half-filled bottle of green detergent, bleach, a scrubbing brush and one or two pieces of wrinkled rag, as well as a duster. This was obviously where Crickley Hall's regular cleaners stowed their gear for the upper floor; he had already removed the mop and broom.
Only the rolled-up rug remained inside the cupboard and Gabe snatched it up and threw it out onto the landing. 'Okay, you son-of-a-bitch,' he muttered under his breath, 'let's see what you're hiding.'
But all he could make out at the back of the cupboard was the wall that for some reason had been painted black. The two thin waterpipes that were low to the floor disappeared through a small hole cut out of the wall's left-hand corner and Gabe bent low to study it. No animal, mouse-size or otherwise, could have squeezed through the space between the pipes and the edge of the cutout. He ran his fingers along the floor, feeling for any other holes at the base of the wall, but there were none.
Carefully, he backed out, rising as he went, making sure he didn't bump into Cally, who was watching from the doorway.
'Have you found somethink, Daddy?' she asked, staring up at him as he loomed over her.
'Not yet, honey,' he replied. 'Gonna need more light.'
He took his daughter by the hand and led her to the top of the stairs.
'Wait right here, Sparky,' he instructed her, 'while I go get me the flashlight.' He held up a finger in front of her face as if the gesture would augment the command, then hurried down the broad staircase, taking two steps at a time, too agile to miss a step. The flashlight had been left by the telephone on the chiffonier and he quickly grabbed it, switching it on in advance as he mounted the stairs again. Cally was waiting right where he had left her, thumb in her mouth, eyes wide with curiosity and just a little nervousness. He gave her a reassuring smile and tousled her hair as he passed. Striding back to the open landing cupboard, he realized he should have also brought his toolbox with him; he might need a long screwdriver or claw hammer to prise up a floorboard or two.
Gabe stooped to enter the cupboard again and Cally peered round the doorframe. Once through the door, he was able to straighten, although not to his full height; the interior ceiling wasn't high enough for that and it slanted downwards towards the back. Shining the torch beam around, he examined walls, floor and ceiling more thoroughly, checking for openings that rodents might use. There weren't any.
He briefly wondered why anyone would bother to paint the back wall black, and that made him curious. He moved further into the cupboard, stooping low, and the circle of light from the torch became smaller, more concentrated, on the rear wall's pitchy surface.
Looking at the edges all around, he noticed that the paint slightly overlapped the surrounding walls and floor, as if whoever had done the painting had been a little slapdash. Whatever the reason for the colour, it made the cupboard look deeper than it really was, the slope of the ceiling adding to the illusion. He pressed the black wall with his fingertips, testing its solidity, then rapped on it with his knuckles. It sounded hollow.
A false wall? Now that could be interesting. The wall sounded and felt like it was made of thin wood. When he had pressed the surface it seemed to give slightly.
Going down on both knees, Gabe inspected the edges once again, this time more carefully, seeking any flaws or breaks that could be used for leverage. But the black paint had been laid on so thickly that all four sides were sealed.
Shoulda brought the toolbox up with me, he admonished himself again. Coulda sliced through the paint with a blade or screwdriver, used either one to pull out the whole partition.
He hunched, stretching himself forward to examine the corner where the waterpipes passed through the wooden wall.
'Whatcha doin', Daddy?'
He looked over his shoulder to see Cally cautiously poking her head into the cupboard.
'Gonna try something. You just hang on out there.'
' 'Kay.'
Gabe dug the index finger of his left hand beneath the lowest pipe and felt the hole beneath it. The bottom corner of the black-painted board had been cut away to allow the pipes access so that there was a small space underneath the lower pipe.
'Might work,' he told himself as he hooked his finger around the edge of the wall. Gabe gave the wood a tentative tug and was surprised when the rear wall moved a fraction with a loud crack. He renewed his efforts, pulling harder this time, no longer testing the board's strength, and the crack was as sharp as a starter pistol when the wood came away a few inches. In the beam of his flashlight and through the curls of disturbed dust, Gabe saw that all the sealing paint along the floor and part of one wall had split. Encouraged, and with more space for a better grip, he wrapped his fingers around the edge of the wood and pulled as hard as he could.
The wooden board that served as the cupboard's rear wall suddenly came away with an even fiercer cracking and he realized that it had only been nailed at the sides to long thin stanchions, the nail heads covered by the black paint, making them invisible to the eye.
Cally expelled a frightened cry at the sound and jerked away from the cupboard doorway, her hands flying to her face. Gabe hadn't noticed; he was too busy shining the light through the gap he had made. The partition was still partly attached to the right-hand stanchion, but by holding back the bottom edge and crouching even lower he could see there was something behind the false wall. Something that obviously had been hidden back there.
30: THE PUNISHMENT BOOK
Eve gathered up the two plastic bags full of shopping from the back seat of the Range Rover. She hadn't bought much from the supermarket in Pulvington, but enough to justify her visit to the town. She had been too distracted to concentrate on a full shop, so had bought only essentials that would get her family through the rest of the week. She would tell Gabe the supermarket was too busy and too noisy for her to stay long.
Overhead the sky had clouded up again, dulling the afternoon and promising an early dusk.
She closed the car door with an elbow and, logoed shopping bags in either hand, she made her way across the bridge towards Crickley Hall. There was a thin green slime on some of the damp boards, which made the bridge slippery, and she went with care. The river below looked angry and brown with loose soil that had broken off from the riverbanks further upstream and she wondered how much more rain it would take to make it overflow; she was sure the level had risen since that morning. Halfway across she glanced up at the Hall's rooftop windows as if expecting to see small colourless faces peering down at her. There was nothing there, though; nobody was watching her. Nevertheless, she felt exposed.